Fred Payne Clatworthy, the favorite independent autochromist of National Geographic 's illustrations editor Franklin Fisher, specialized in scenic Autochromes of the American West. Clatworthy owned and operated a photo studio in Rocky Mountain National Park. The original National Geographic (Vol. LIII, June 1928) caption for this image reads,

"No other tribe resisted the oncoming tide of the white man's civilization with more determination than the brave and aggressive Sioux. A well-equipped people, both physically and mentally, they were for many years monarchs of the country that is now Minnesota, the Dakotas, and Montana. The ancestors of some of the chiefs pictured here planned and executed the campaign in which Custer's immortal band perished."